Agricultural entities and other entities often need to precisely apply materials (such as fertilizers, pesticides, weed killers, water, seeds, plants, or paint) to exact or near exact locations. For example, this could involve the use of large vehicles on farms or other agricultural facilities. In this example, each of these vehicles could include a tank of material to be released and long arms (called “booms”) containing a number of nozzles through which the material is released. As another example, this could involve the use of large vehicles on roads, runways, parking lots, or other areas. In this example, the vehicles may include mechanisms for releasing paint onto the roads, runways, parking lots, or other areas.
These types of systems typically include actuators that control the flow of materials to be released, such as by allowing or blocking the flow of material into the nozzles. However, many conventional systems often lack any mechanism for individually controlling the actuators. Some conventional systems may include solenoids in the actuators for controlling the release of material. The solenoids move plungers in the actuators back and forth, which allows the systems to control whether the actuators are open (to allow release) or closed (to block release). The solenoids in conventional systems often use large metallic plungers in order to block the release of material. Unfortunately, these large metallic plungers are often expensive to manufacture. Conventional solenoids are also often unable to move the plungers effectively when the material being released is at a higher pressure.